Ten-year-old prodigy Negi Springfield, has just graduated from magic academy, and in order to become a master mage he is sent to Japan to teach English at an all-girls middle school. But Negi has a bigger dream than just becoming a master mage. He wants to find his missing father, "The Thousand Master", the strongest mage that has ever lived. And he soon finds that searching for his father wont be as easy as he first hoped. In fact, it pushes him and his students into life-or-death battles that decides the fate of millions.

I read the manga back in the day where i forced myself to keep up with "popular" series and have to get this off my chest after years of silence. I dislike Akamatsu(only the first half of Love Hina is ok in my book) and this manga really pissed me off. The world rules and random development made no sense.How often did Negi change his age, how often did the genre shift on a whim and how little time did pass ?Then the vast harem elements which make up 50% of the story in form of filler and the ending are a joke(one point deduction). I read that he fought the publisher(but still works for them ?) or something and the readers lost i guess.It least i could jump off. The ecchi elements were downright unreadable to me(loli rape jokes really ?) and are especially problematic if you know that the author does lolicon porn in his free time. Which is of the yuri variety so why he messed up so badly here i don´t even know. It´ like Sailor Moon never happened.The art is technically well done but the designs are all to similar and bland to be remembered. I read 3 random chapters of the "sequel" for reference and expect no review for that one because i found it a money grabbing joke and stopped reading garbage thank to manga´s like Negima. Akamatsu may be a friend of Miura but he and i will probably never meet again. Read Ran to Haiiro no Sekai for a magical manga instead.

The manga was great and fun from start to finish, Character development, especially emotion-wise, was portraited detaily. I like the ending too, it was not rushed like most other manga, ending in 1 or 2 chapters, this one has enough chapters for closing most, if not all the loose ends.

Overall, a great fantasical adventure, with lighthearted but emotional friendship, and love comedy, without being too forcefull, typical of a harem story.

Give it a read if you haven't, it's an experience totally worth your time!

i read this because i love cute little kids saving the world, and im not dissapointed at all. its not always you find a manga where 10 year old boy get molested by hoards of 15 year old girls and not a hentai, so im very thankful of this manga.

the first 250ch of this manga is a blast. i love the interactions between negi and the girls, and their countless struggles for his lips. the craziness of mahora academy and the diverse stories for every one of the girls make me respect the mangaka in being able to keep track of every single one of them. im not gonna lie, until the end im unable to separate some of the girls from each other, their hairstyles not enough make me notice them. around ch 250 to 310, the battle is too intense, i get quite bored with the story. to anyone who love battle manga, this will be great for you, but for me that prefer the interactions of negi and the girls this is quite a drag and i have to force myself to read them. in the end i do not think anything is properly explained. but the last chapters are very cool. i love the 'after the end' chapters, because it shows how close is their relationships! i wish negi stay a shota forever. i love that the various characters are given proper ending, it bring somewhat a closure to me after these 38 volumes.

This manga had a good premise until it basically turned into a Dragon Ball Z clone.

All of the wonderful character development and comedic aspects that were present in the earlier volumes pretty much went down the drain about half way though when the focus, for some reason, shifted to pointless battles (no one cares about) and Negi gaining more and more unrealistic powers. Even the romantic elements which made the first several volumes interesting were for the most part abandoned. This manga really should have stayed a romantic comedy and ended after 10-20 volumes!

This is only the second time I managed to read 20+ volumes of a manga and wasn't able to finish it -- I dropped it somewhere in the middle of volume 33 as I didn't feel any connection what-so-ever to the story anymore.

This manga was absolutely fantastic, hands down. Rom-com, action-adventure, slice of life, this encompasses it all. To all the people out there dissapointed with the ending, take note that Akamatsu-sensei is undergoing a copyright dispute with his publisher at the moment, which is why he ended the series early (to protect his copyright). Once the dispute ends, I expect that we'll see a reboot of the series that addresses all the plot holes the rushed ending left us.

probably many argue, Negima has a lot of character, and it's confusing. But, that's the interesting part of Negima. 3-A All students have different properties, and it's trying to show of the problems they face. That's what makes me like curious, what will happen to the girls then? or, in fact how her feelings are real? . It's very interesting and sometimes surprise us. things that I get from reading the Negima is STUBBORN, not to give in any case. And there is one very important thing! Ken Akamatsu CANT DRAWING UGLY PEOPLE? ,BECAUSE THE GIRLS THAT LOOKS VERY CUTE,hahaha

I was full of heart with Negi for the first 10 volumes and continued to look forward to the day the series ends for a few years *without reading any further new chapters because I thought it would be more awesome to read marathon like in a day*.

But, whenever I checked it out in the past. I always saw so many new characters. Not only the panels inside the mange were full which seemed like they would break any second but the squeezing of the characters faced similar problem too.

Recently, by chance, I found out that it has completed and checked it out for a bit. Man... I just didn't want to read it anymore. Not because of the review but because of the poor developments that matched nothing of my expectations the first time I read it.

By the way, I loved the phrase of AquarianDemocrat: "the greatest let down in manga history" hahahahahahah <<< this should have been included by Mr. Ken himself!

I started it. Loved it. Then dropped it. Not worth it to finish up is what my guts told me. And I did listen.

Not sure why I see so much hate for this manga. Yes - the story changes its focus from funny to serious. Yes - the ending was rushed. Yes - there are a lot of characters. Ken Akamatsu proves he's a pro and i feel he succeeded in doing what he originally set out to do a decade ago.

To address the change in tone for this story, I need to reference basic plot theory: the 3 act structure (which dates back to Ancient Greece if anyone is interested). It's comprised of Beginning, Middle, and End. To cut to the chase (dis aint a lit lesson) in the beginning you need to give the protagonist a normal/steady setting. The doorway to Act 2 involves shattering this setting in order to force the protagonist into action (which is why the story gets "serious after serious after serious.")

I felt he did a great job handling the huge number of characters introduced. This was an ambitious project for sure. Almost everyone of the the side characters get a small story arc. "Ahhhh too many characters.../Ahh too confusinggg." If you keep in mind who the main characters and the side characters are, it's really not that bad! Again, to refer to basic plot theory, one of the best ways to create a satisfying ending is to make the story as chaotic as possible and tie up everything at the end.

This leads us to the ending. Yes, it does seem like a major story arc was cut out. Most likely, my interpretation anyway, the final battle in the magical world was originally intended to be the "doorway" to act 3: set up the true villain, clear the way for the protagonist's final confrontation, force action, yadda yadda. So the story got cut short. I don't know if it's the publishers or personal life or what, but it did. What I appreciate from Akamatsu was that, thanks to his awesome skeelz in planning the plot structure and setting, he was able to pull off a somewhat reasonable ending. The snapshot of the attendance book really helped to make the ending resonate with the beginning and middle of the story. Sure some loose ends were missed. The author even indirectly apologizes to the readers by saying "this is a story for another time."

Anyway, to get to my point, besides the obviously rushed (missing?) ending, Ken Akamatsu proves that he is a master story teller. There is definitely room to make a sequel to give us the ending story arc. I will definitely be rushing to the book store if it ever gets published.

Negima was OK, it's funny, and it's entertaining but it got aborted mid-way by the publisher, the romance isn't very romantic, and the plot makes no sense and there are too many characters. By the end, I was agreeing with the guy who called this the greatest let down in manga history. In fact, if you don't want to read my rambling rant, just read his eight reviews down → ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓

The first problem with Negima is probably that THERE ARE TOO MANY CHARACTERS, and that's not a complaint like "oh, I can't keep track of all these people" I mean Akamatsu-sensei introduced too many for himself to be able to handle, and he starts quietly killing subplots and ditching long before his publisher cut him off.

Negima starts as a sort of shotacon-ish romcom, with a ten year old teacher being put in charge of a class at an all-girls highschool. He ends up being forced to share a dorm room with a girl who hates him because he replaced a teacher she had a crush on, because this is Akamatsu-sensei you know there will be a lot of (funny) parodies of other series but also some heartfelt moments. There are a lot of good Negi-Asuna chapters early on.

The first problem, of course, is that his class is 30 students and Akamatsu-sensei makes clear he wants some sort of character-development for all 30 of them, which again, might not even have been too hard if this was a manga about a mage who was a highschool teacher.

Yes, the problems don't even start appearing until Akamatus-sensei abruptly leaves the romcom genre 50 chapters into his manga, quickly Akamatsu-sensei starts making up excuses to shoehorn his romcom with 31+ characters into a shounen action-adventure... with over 31 major characters. So everybody in this class, for a totally insane and nonsensical reason, are all given magical powers and put into one of those gumdrop-and-lollipop type shounen adventures, several people's personalities are completely revamped, and this new manga is vastly different than the first 50 chapters.

Oh, and another expansive cast of characters are introduced, including some character who is introduced as some-sort of Naruto parody that isn't funny and then somehow gets grandfathered into the main-plotline where he then spends the next 250 chapters as the most pointless character in a manga with a lot of pointless characters, aimlessly following Negi around since Akamatsu-sensei apparently forgot exactly what he was doing with him. Eventually a romantic subplot for him is introduced, that is neither romantic or has much of a plot actually.

I realize this might sound like it makes no sense, but that's because, from this point on, the manga makes no sense.

It's like that big, aggravating final battle in a shounen manga where each chapter so little happens because the mangaka has to switch between all the different characters all the time, only here we switch among 31+ characters. Crazily little happens every chapter.

The second problem is that "plot-development" for female characters, since this is Akamatsu-sensei after all, involves them falling passionately in love with the main character. Did mention there were over 30 female characters? This not only gets boring, since he recycles some version of the same thing every time, but also seems... I don't know, unfair I guess? They're romances are doomed from the start and you know, Negi is a fine chap but he's not that great. It seems cheap.

The third problem is that Akamatsu-sensei won't do Yuri, if you're going to do a romance with such a huge female to male ratio in the cast you should be prepared to do a few yuri couples. He does one, and it's mainly done for comedy, which is a shame because the lesbians are some of the nicest characters in this manga and they get treated like crap and are the but of a lot of his cheap jokes, which sells them short.

Fourth, is that he was running out of time even when he thought he had 700 chapters. For example, some characters crushes/romances/story lines are simply abandoned or cut off [looks at Ako] in various miserable ways long before Akamatsu thought he would have anything but his 700 chapters, subplots are killed [looks pointedly at Johnny], ect. et. al. because there's simply that many characters.

Eventually just as Akamatsu-sensei get into the groove of things, and it looks like things are looking up the manga is axed, a bizarre, rushed ending is shoved in which solves nothing and leaves every single romantic subplot hanging, including negis. Yes, after 355 chapters we don't get ANY SORT OF ROMANTIC CONCLUSION WITH NEGI. THANKS FOR NOTHING KODANSHA, YOU @#$%^!

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By the end the only real thing I'm getting out of the manga is that the NEA is right and class sizes need to be reduced because not being able to finish any manga is 355 chapters is insane.